Early life

Grotius’s father, a learned man, had been burgomaster of Delft and curator of the recently founded Leiden University (courses then would be similar to high-school classes today). An extremely gifted child, Hugo Grotius wrote Latin elegies at age 8 and became a student of the arts faculty at Leiden University at age 11. He studied under the renowned humanist Joseph Scaliger, who contributed greatly to Grotius’s development as a philologist.

In 1598 he accompanied Johann van Oldenbarnevelt, the leading Dutch statesman, to France, where he met Henry IV, who called Grotius the “miracle of Holland.” This experience is reflected in Pontifex Romanus (1598), which comprises six monologues on the current political situation. In 1599 he settled in The Hague as an advocate, lodging for a time with the court preacher and theologian Johannes Uyttenbogaert.

In 1601 the States of Holland requested from Grotius an account of the United Provinces’ revolt against Spain. The resulting work, covering the period from 1559 to 1609, was written in the manner of the Roman historian Tacitus. Although it was largely finished by 1612, it was published only posthumously in 1657 as Annales et Historiae de Rebus Belgicis (“Annals and Histories of the Revolts of the Low Countries”).

Throughout his life Grotius wrote in a variety of fields. He edited, with commentary, an encyclopaedic work on the seven liberal arts by the North African poet Martianus Capella and the Phaenomena by the Greek astronomer Aratus of Soli. He wrote a number of philological works and a drama, Adamus Exul (1601; Adam in Exile), which was greatly admired by the English poet John Milton. Grotius also published many theological and politico-theological works, including De Veritate Religionis Christianae (1627; The Truth of the Christian Religion), the book that in his lifetime probably enjoyed the highest popularity among his works.

Involvement in politics

Grotius was deeply involved in Dutch politics. In the early 17th century the united kingdom of Spain and Portugal claimed a monopoly on trade with the East Indies. In 1604, after a Dutch admiral had seized the Portuguese vessel Santa Catarina, the Dutch East India Company asked Grotius to produce a work legally defending the action on the ground that, by claiming a monopoly on the right of trade, Spain-Portugal had deprived the Dutch of their natural trading rights. The work, De Jure Praedae (On the Law of Prize and Booty), remained unpublished during his lifetime, except for one chapter—in which Grotius defends free access to the ocean for all nations—which appeared under the famous title Mare Liberum (The Freedom of the Seas) in 1609. The work buttressed the Dutch position in the negotiations regarding the Twelve Years’ Truce concluded that year with Spain and was widely circulated and often reprinted.

In 1607 Grotius was appointed advocaat-fiscaal (attorney general) of the provinces of Holland, Zeeland, and West Friesland. In the following year he married Maria van Reigersberch, the daughter of the burgomaster of Veere, an intelligent and courageous woman who stood by him unwaveringly in the difficult years to come. A member of the Remonstrants (primarily upper-class “regents” siding with Jacobus Arminius’s tolerant Protestantism), Grotius was engaged in the bitter political struggle under Oldenbarnevelt against the Gomarists (orthodox Calvinists led by Franciscus Gomarus who were dominant among the ministers and the populace), who were under the leadership of Prince Maurice, for control of the country.

In 1618 Maurice, using his military powers in a coup d’état, ordered the arrest of Arminian leaders. Oldenbarnevelt was executed for high treason, and Grotius was sentenced to life imprisonment in the fortress of Loevestein. In 1621, with the aid of his wife, Grotius made a dramatic escape from the castle by hiding in a chest of books. He fled to Antwerp and finally to Paris, where he stayed until 1631 under the patronage of Louis XIII.

[f]ully convinced…that there is a common law among nations, which is valid alike for war and in war, I have had many and weighty reasons for undertaking to write upon this subject. Throughout the Christian world I observed a lack of restraint in relation to war, such as even barbarous nations should be ashamed of. (Prolegomena, 28.)

Grotius sought to achieve his practical objective to minimize bloodshed in wars by constructing a general theory of law (jurisprudentia) that would restrain and regulate war between various independent powers, including states.

Following Roman law and the work of the Stoics, Grotius placed natural law at the centre of his jurisprudentia. He argued that a law deduced from man’s inherent nature would have a degree of validity

even if we should concede that which cannot be conceded without the utmost wickedness, that there is no God, or that the affairs of men are of no concern to Him. (Prolegomena, 11.)

He made this daring argument because he believed that natural law—the most important tool to restrain and regulate wars in Europe—must be independent of religion, applying to all people regardless of their religious beliefs. He realized, however, that the goal of restraining and regulating war could not be achieved by secular law alone. He thus reintroduced various elements of Christianity into his jurisprudentia. Grotius has often been quoted to “secularize” law or natural law, but the so-called secularization of law was hypothetical rather than categorical. In order to understand this critical character of law in De Jure Belli ac Pacis, one must understand the entire structure of his argumentation.

Grotius adopts a multilayered structure of norms, including various religious ones, to restrain and regulate both the resort to war and violence in warfare. When Grotius found it difficult to persuade various kinds of rulers to refrain from resorting to war or committing cruel acts during the war by means of secular norms either by natural law or law of nations, he did not hesitate to resort to “law of God,” mainly taken from the Old Testament, or “law of love” and other similar norms taken from the New Testament. He even relied on the argument based on utility as a last resort when he found it difficult to discourage political leaders to refrain from violence by means of normative argument alone, though he wrote that consideration of utility was not his concern. This multilayered character of the argumentation was the vital means to achieve his practical goal: minimizing bloodshed.

Grotius believed that only wars with just causes should be allowed. Because there is no judge for judicial settlement between nations, war as a means to solve conflicts must be tolerated. However, causes of war should be limited to causes for litigation. For example, the defense and restitution of things are just causes of war (see alsojust war). He also developed a theory of crime and punishment, which he used to characterize certain wars as just punishment for crimes committed by independent powers, including states.

Later life

Prince Maurice died in 1625, and in 1631 Grotius returned to Holland. After intense debate in the States of Holland, Grotius was again threatened with arrest. In 1632 he went to Hamburg, then the centre of Franco-Swedish diplomatic relations. In 1634 the Swedish chancellor, Axel, Count Oxenstierna, offered him the position of Swedish ambassador in Paris. Grotius accepted the appointment and Swedish citizenship. He settled again in Paris, but his life as a diplomat was not as successful as his life as a scholar.

In 1636–37 he worked on the Historia Gotthorum, Vandalorum et Langobardorum (“History of the Goths, Vandals, and Lombards”). He showed great interest in the reunification of the Christian church and published a number of works dealing with this subject. He also revised, again and again, De Jure Belli ac Pacis; the last edition including his own revision was published in 1646, shortly after his death. On the other hand, Grotius was not appointed to be a negotiator at the important peace conferences of Münster and Osnabrück that finally resulted in the Peace of Westphalia that ended the Thirty Years’ War. In 1644 Grotius was relieved of his post of ambassador in Paris. After consultations with Queen Christina, he left Stockholm for Lübeck on Aug. 12, 1645, but was shipwrecked on the coast of eastern Pomerania. The great man, great not only in the history of international law but also in natural law, civil law, criminal law, and modern humanities, soon died of exhaustion at Rostock.

Assessment

Grotius designed his theory to apply not only to states but also to rulers and subjects of law in general. De Jure Belli ac Pacis thus proved useful in the later development of theories of both private and criminal law. It is in the area of international law, however, that Grotius’s masterpiece has been most influential. Its general normative framework provided a foundation to constitute and regulate relations between emerging sovereign states, which became the basic units of modern international society.

Non-European civilizations also had developed norms and institutions for regulating the behaviour of independent powers in their own regions (e.g., the siyar in Islamic civilization and the Sino-centric tributary system in East Asia). However, many of these civilizations had been subjugated by the European colonial powers by the end of the 19th century. Thus, European international law became global international law, and Grotius’s influence accordingly was magnified on a global scale. Although long regarded as the “father of international law”—and his importance has been undeniable and lasting—this title is misleading; instead, Grotius was one of many “fathers” of European international law, and European international law is just one of many historically coexisting regional normative systems.

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